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1 – 10 of over 69000Jamie Carlson, Siegfried P. Gudergan, Carsten Gelhard and Mohammad Mahfuzur Rahman
Social media brand platforms have become a popular means for engaged customers to share information and experiences with brands and other customers. However, empirical research on…
Abstract
Purpose
Social media brand platforms have become a popular means for engaged customers to share information and experiences with brands and other customers. However, empirical research on how customer engagement (CE) relates to customers’ sharing intentions with the brand is limited. This study aims to investigate causal patterns of four CE dimensions – focused attention, absorption, enthusiasm and interaction – together with two cognitive structure properties in stimulating sharing intentions with the brand.
Design/methodology/approach
Using data from 782 Chinese customers of brand pages on the social media platform Weibo, this paper is the first to use both finite mixture partial least squares (FIMIX-PLS) analysis and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to empirically assess the impact of CE configurations on sharing intentions.
Findings
The findings imply that not all of the CE dimensions co-occur necessarily and that different configurations of them can produce superior sharing intentions, conditional on the cognitive structure of customers, including their level of brand knowledge and avant-gardism.
Research limitations/implications
Although restricted to customers on Weibo, the results inform practice about how social media technology can facilitate different CE configurations and customer sharing intentions.
Practical implications
The results inform brand managers’ segmentation efforts and CE content marketing initiatives that can induce different CE configurations and customer sharing intentions with customers that possess high avant-gard and brand knowledge characteristics.
Originality/value
This study is the first to substantiate how different CE configurations (as gestalts) affect sharing intentions in social media and to challenge conventional net-effects thinking about CE dimensions. Understanding how such conditional configurations foster sharing via a social media platform is advantageous because it can improve segmentation efforts to strengthen brand relationships.
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Lin Jia, Chen Lin, Yiran Qin, Xiaowen Pan and Zhongyun Zhou
With the rapid development of paid online social question and answer (Q&A) communities, monetary social functions have been introduced and have potential benefits for both…
Abstract
Purpose
With the rapid development of paid online social question and answer (Q&A) communities, monetary social functions have been introduced and have potential benefits for both platforms and users. However, these functions' impact on knowledge contribution remains uncertain. This study proposes a conceptual model based on the stimulus–organism–response framework, according to which monetary and non-monetary social functions can help nurture short-term and long-term relationships among community users, and thereafter improves social identity and knowledge-sharing intentions.
Design/methodology/approach
This study selects Zhihu, a famous online social Q&A community in China, and conducts an online survey to collect data from its frequent users. A sample of 286 valid questionnaires was collected to test our research model by using a structural equation modeling method. In addition, a bootstrapping approach is used to test the mediation effect.
Findings
Results indicate that monetary social functions help nurture short-term and long-term relationships among community users. However, non-monetary social functions only affect short-term relationships directly. Short-term and long-term relationships both have a positive relationship with social identity and thereafter improve users' knowledge-sharing intentions.
Originality/value
This study focuses on users' knowledge-sharing intentions in Q&A communities from the perspective of social. Specifically, we separated social functions in Q&A platforms into monetary and non-monetary ones and explored their impact on the development of short-term and long-term relationships. Results demonstrate the importance of monetary social functions and explain how monetary and non-monetary social functions affect users' knowledge-sharing intentions in different approaches.
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Richard Freeman, Ben Marder, Matthew Gorton and Rob Angell
The purpose of this study is to understand the effect of increasing the intensity of sexual or violent content on consumer responses to online video advertisements, with a…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to understand the effect of increasing the intensity of sexual or violent content on consumer responses to online video advertisements, with a particular emphasis on sharing intentions.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper uses a between-subjects experimental design across two studies using new to the world online video advertisements as stimuli.
Findings
Study 1 finds that increasing the intensity of sexual and violent humor improves advertisement effectiveness amongst men but leads to significantly more negative attitudes toward the advertisement and brand amongst women. Study 2 identifies gender and humor type as moderators for sharing intentions in the presence of audience diversity. While men are more likely to publicly share sexual and violent humor advertisements, social anxiety mediates intentions to share sexual humor advertisements in the presence of greater audience diversity.
Practical implications
The paper offers insights to practitioners regarding the use of risqué forms of humor as part of a digital marketing strategy.
Originality/value
Drawing on and extending benign violation theory, the paper introduces and verifies a theoretical model for understanding consumer responses to the use of risqué forms of humor in online advertisements. It identifies how audience diversity affects sharing intentions for sexual and violent humor-based advertisements on social media.
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Continuous knowledge sharing by active users, who are highly active in answering questions, is crucial to the sustenance of social question-and-answer (Q&A) sites. The purpose of…
Abstract
Purpose
Continuous knowledge sharing by active users, who are highly active in answering questions, is crucial to the sustenance of social question-and-answer (Q&A) sites. The purpose of this paper is to examine such knowledge sharing considering reason-based elaborate decision and habit-based automated cognitive processes.
Design/methodology/approach
To verify the research hypotheses, survey data on subjective intentions and web-crawled data on objective behavior are utilized. The sample size is 337 with the response rate of 27.2 percent. Negative binomial and hierarchical linear regressions are used given the skewed distribution of the dependent variable (i.e. the number of answers).
Findings
Both elaborate decision (linking satisfaction, intentions and continuance behavior) and automated cognitive processes (linking past and continuance behavior) are significant and substitutable.
Research limitations/implications
By measuring both subjective intentions and objective behavior, it verifies a detailed mechanism linking continuance intentions, past behavior and continuous knowledge sharing. The significant influence of automated cognitive processes implies that online knowledge sharing is habitual for active users.
Practical implications
Understanding that online knowledge sharing is habitual is imperative to maintaining continuous knowledge sharing by active users. Knowledge sharing trends should be monitored to check if the frequency of sharing decreases. Social Q&A sites should intervene to restore knowledge sharing behavior through personalized incentives.
Originality/value
This is the first study utilizing both subjective intentions and objective behavior data in the context of online knowledge sharing. It also introduces habit-based automated cognitive processes to this context. This approach extends the current understanding of continuous online knowledge sharing behavior.
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Currently, consumers can easily access social media to share information and experiences. How a relationship between these consumers influences their decisions has not been…
Abstract
Purpose
Currently, consumers can easily access social media to share information and experiences. How a relationship between these consumers influences their decisions has not been clearly investigated. When consumers participate in information sharing activities, they usually communicate with each other and can perceive their social distance from others. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to explore the direct and indirect effects of perceived social distance on eWOM sharing intentions.
Design/methodology/approach
Specifically, a moderated mediation model was validated, in which the indirect effect of perceived social distance on eWOM sharing intentions through reciprocity expectations was moderated by trust.
Findings
Perceived social distance had a positive indirect effect on eWOM sharing intentions through reciprocity expectations, which was found to be negatively moderated by trust.
Originality/value
This study integrates the concept of perceived social distance into the eWOM research area. Moreover, this result adds to the s-commerce literature by specifying the conditions of the indirect effect of perceived social distance through reciprocity expectations on eWOM sharing intention.
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Jianmei Wang, Masoumeh Zareapoor, Yeh-Cheng Chen, Pourya Shamsolmoali and Jinwen Xie
The purpose of the study is threefold: first, to identify what factors influence mobile users' willingness of news learning and sharing, second, to find out whether users'…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of the study is threefold: first, to identify what factors influence mobile users' willingness of news learning and sharing, second, to find out whether users' learning in the news platforms will affect their sharing behavior and third, to access the impact of sharing intention on actual sharing behavior on the mobile platform.
Design/methodology/approach
This study proposes an influence mechanism model for examining the relationship among the factors, news learning and news sharing. The proposed mechanism includes factors at three levels: personal, interpersonal and social level. To achieve this, researchers collected data from 474 mobile news users in China to test the hypotheses. The tools SPSS 26.0 and AMOS 23.0 were used to analysis the reliability, validity, model fits and structural equation modeling (SEM), respectively.
Findings
The findings indicate that news learning on the mobile platforms is affected by self-efficacy and self-enhancement. And news sharing intention is influenced by self-efficacy, interpersonal trust, interpersonal reciprocity, online community identity and social norms positively. News sharing intention has a significant effect on news sharing behavior, but news learning has an insignificant relationship with new sharing.
Originality/value
This study provides practical guidelines for mobile platform operators and news media managers by explicating the various factors of users' engagement on the news platforms. This paper also enriches the literature of news learning and news sharing on mobile by the integration of two theories: the social ecology theory and the interpersonal behavior theory.
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Yulong Tang, Chen Luo and Yan Su
The ballooning health misinformation on social media raises grave concerns. Drawing upon the S-O-R (Stimulus-Organism-Response) model and the information processing literature…
Abstract
Purpose
The ballooning health misinformation on social media raises grave concerns. Drawing upon the S-O-R (Stimulus-Organism-Response) model and the information processing literature, this study aims to explore (1) how social media health information seeking (S) affects health misinformation sharing intention (R) through the channel of health misperceptions (O) and (2) whether the mediation process would be contingent upon different information processing predispositions.
Design/methodology/approach
Data were collected from a survey comprising 388 respondents from the Chinese middle-aged or above group, one of China's most susceptible populations to health misinformation. Standard multiple linear regression models and the PROCESS Macro were adopted to examine the direct effect and the moderated mediation model.
Findings
Results bolstered the S-O-R-based mechanism, in which health misperceptions mediated social media health information seeking's effect on health misinformation sharing intention. As an indicator of analytical information processing, need for cognition (NFC) failed to moderate the mediation process. Contrarily, faith in intuition (FI), an indicator reflecting intuitive information processing, served as a significant moderator. The positive association between social media health information seeking and misperceptions was stronger among respondents with low FI.
Originality/value
This study sheds light on health misinformation sharing research by bridging health information seeking, information internalization and information sharing. Moreover, the authors extended the S-O-R model by integrating information processing predispositions, which differs this study from previous literature and advances the extant understanding of how information processing styles work in the face of online health misinformation. The particular age group and the Chinese context further inform context-specific implications regarding online health misinformation regulation.
Peer review
The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-04-2023-0157.
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Recently, the popularity and growth of social media have boosted the development of social commerce (s-commerce). The purpose of this paper is to investigate consumers’ decisions…
Abstract
Purpose
Recently, the popularity and growth of social media have boosted the development of social commerce (s-commerce). The purpose of this paper is to investigate consumers’ decisions in s-commerce, for which this study conducted empirical research on WeChat, a very popular social media in China, to validate how guanxi elements (e.g. ganqing, renqing and xinren) affect consumers’ decisions in s-commerce.
Design/methodology/approach
To examine the research model, an online survey instrument was developed to gather data. The hypotheses were tested using partial least squares modeling.
Findings
The results confirm that guanxi elements are positively related to eWOM sharing intention and social shopping intention. Moreover, these effects are mediated by a sense of belonging.
Originality/value
This study enhances the existing literature by introducing the concept of guanxi elements to the context of s-commerce, and linking the concept of guanxi elements and consumers’ decisions. Moreover, this study improves the theoretical and empirical understanding of guanxi elements by investigating its impact on eWOM sharing intention and social shopping intention. Third, the results confirm that guanxi elements not only influence a sense of belonging but also conjointly impacts eWOM sharing intention and social shopping intention in s-commerce.
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Balpreet Kaur, Justin Paul and Rishi Raj Sharma
The study aims to examine “Advertisement content likeability” and its relationships with consumers' purchase and sharing intentions.
Abstract
Purpose
The study aims to examine “Advertisement content likeability” and its relationships with consumers' purchase and sharing intentions.
Design/methodology/approach
Second-order factor analysis was applied. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to measure the moderating effects of technology adoption model, knowledge sharing and Internet maven traits on advertising content's virality.
Findings
Results indicate the dimensional structure of ad content likeability that is relevant in predicting consumers' sharing and purchase intentions. Furthermore, the moderating effects of technology acceptance factors (perceived usefulness and ease-of-use), knowledge sharing motives (altruism, reputation and expected reciprocal benefits) and senders' Internet maven characteristics were also found on “Ad content likeability” and “sharing intentions.”
Originality/value
The study expands the theoretical horizon of factors that significantly increase an advertisement's velocity to become more viral.
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Mohamad Hoseini, Fatemeh Saghafi and Emad Aghayi
A great number of people use mobile social networks (MSNs) to communicate, entertain, learn, search and get advice. Growth and survival of any community depends on the activities…
Abstract
Purpose
A great number of people use mobile social networks (MSNs) to communicate, entertain, learn, search and get advice. Growth and survival of any community depends on the activities of its members in sharing information and knowledge. The purpose of this study is to assess the influential factors on knowledge sharing behavior in MSNs in different perspectives in a comprehensive manner.
Design/methodology/approach
A model of factors affecting knowledge sharing behavior in MSNs is proposed by applying the structural equation modeling and path analysis to data collected from a sample of users of a well-known MSN through a questionnaire.
Findings
This study supports the contributive aspects of trust and enjoying participation in sharing knowledge, while there is no significant correlation between perceived ease of use and knowledge sharing behavior in MSNs. Furthermore, intention to share knowledge can lead to actual behavior in MSNs environments.
Practical implications
The results obtained here provide a grasp of factors that influence knowledge sharing in mobile communities which would promote enhanced contribution towards their online communities by MSNs administrators.
Originality/value
A four-dimensional comprehensive model consisting of social, psychological, cultural and technological perspectives in one package is proposed here for knowledge sharing behavior in MSNs. Such a comprehensive perspective is overlooked in the existing literature.
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